CHAPTER THREE

Professor Fauna pushed open the doors of the school and marched toward the parking lot.

“Bigfoot?!” Elliot said, trying to keep up. “Seriously? Bigfoot doesn’t even exist! That myth has been debunked hundreds of times!”

Uchenna was singing softly to herself:

What is a Bigfoot?

Do we even know?

In the deepest winter,

Is it white as fallen snow?

Living in the jungle,

Is it orange like an ape?

Hiding in your lunch box,

Is it purple like a grape?

Elliot looked at her. “I have to admit,” he said, “that was one of your better songs.”

Uchenna grinned.

“If Bigfoot is a myth, Elliot,” Professor Fauna was saying, “why did I just get a call from Mack gəqidəb?”

“Mack guh-kay-dub?” said Uchenna, trying to pronounce the unfamiliar word. “That’s an unusual name.”

The professor raised an eyebrow. “You think so? I have known a number of people named Mack! There is even a tasty sandwich named that. Have you never heard of the Large Mack Donald?”

“I don’t think that’s what it’s called.”

“Anyway, Mack is a member of the Muckleshoot Indian Nation. His name, gәqidәb, in Muckleshoot means ‘bright minded.’ His people live in the state of Washington. Now that is an unusual name, is it not? Washington? Why would someone name anything after two thousand pounds of laundry?” Professor Fauna shook his head. “Anyway, Mack and his family, like many of the Muckleshoot, are concerned about protecting the natural world . . . including creatures unrecognized by science!”

They had come to Professor Fauna’s blue-and-white airplane, the Phoenix. It was in its usual three parking spots, between Principal Kowalski’s seafoam-green hatchback and Miss Vole’s Harley motorcycle.

A shiver skittered down Elliot’s back. It was not just that the Phoenix was scarred with rust and dents, or that its front window was spider-webbed with cracks. It wasn’t even that on their last flight, the plane had crashed. It was that, as Professor Fauna happily admitted, the Phoenix crashed on every flight. But somehow the professor and his friends always got it flying again. Elliot wished they would stop doing that.

Professor Fauna flung open the passenger door of the small plane and helped Uchenna in. Elliot hung back. Inside the plane, Uchenna picked up a camouflage backpack with holes poked all over the main compartment. She unzipped it. A small blue creature popped out. Its head looked like the head of a tiny deer. A tiny blue deer.

“Hey, Jersey,” said Uchenna.

Jersey, the Jersey Devil, stood up in the bag and spread his bright red wings. Then he licked Uchenna’s face.

Uchenna looked through the open airplane door at Elliot. “Aren’t you coming?”

Elliot was staring at the Phoenix like it was trying to kill him. Which, as far as he was concerned, it was.

Suddenly, Jersey leaped from Uchenna’s arms and glided on outstretched wings over to Elliot. The little blue creature dug his claws into Elliot’s shirt. Then he licked Elliot on the nose.

Elliot sighed.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this thing.”